Hitler: “The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair for less than what Trump did [in terms of damaging the U.S.].”

Jordan Peele is no one’s idea of a brand-level visionary. He’s certainly no Spike Lee or Rod Serling or anyone in that grade-A realm. He’s basically a guy who mainly produces and occasionally dabbles in feature-film directing.

Peele got lucky once with Get Out (’17), but he’ll never breathe that kind of rarified air again. (Bob Strauss knows this but will never admit to having absurdly over-praised that racially-stamped Stepford Wives.) Us was agreeably creepy and unsettling but didn’t seem to add up to much. Nope felt portentous but was also patchy and splotchy and WTF-ish.

I’ve always regarded Peele as a well-liked, moderately talented industry hyphenate (director, producer, project hustler) who jumps into or attaches himself to anything that’s shaking (like that 2019 Twilight Zone series, which was nothing). Peele is a likable guy and fine as far as he goes, but he’s basically a hack. (And that’s not a felonious offense.) It seems as if Jeff Sneider is entertaining a similar assessment.

It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century, 5.2), mainly because I’ve been off the Apes barge for many years now. I just don’t care any more. My investment is nil.

But I’m glad I finally sat down with it as Kingdom is obviously a first-rate, well-produced, technically excellent effort — as good as this sort of thing gets. As far as it went I respected the passion and exactitude that everyone apparently invested top to bottom, especially as it contains the most realistically rendered, subtly expressive CG simians I’ve ever seen.

Plus I found the performances uniformly excellent — Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, etc.

Plus I loved, incidentally, the re-appearance of those ape hide scarecrows, which I haven’t seen since Franklin Schaffner’e 1968 original.

But at the end of the day I felt completely untouched and indifferent. Respectful but also relieved when it finally ended. Yes, I was annoyed by the 145-minute length, but all features are too long these days. It’s a plague.

Zoomers are entitled, I suppose, to revel in their own reptilian space alien “no one can hear you scream” face-hugger flick…a seemingly rote, fairly primitive revisiting of all the “terrifying” Alien franchise basics.

The key phrase is “set between the events of Alien (’79) and Aliens (’86).” So Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley exists somewhere in the realm of Fede Álvarez’s film, which is titled Alien: Romulus and opens on 8.16.

Perhaps the main Romulus protagonists are aware of the loss of the Nostromo but don’t know any specifics…who knows?

The Romulus cast members are all Zoomers (born in the late ’90s or early aughts). Alvarez, born in ’78, is a codger in their midst, relatively speaking. The close-to-dwarf-sized Cailee Spaeny (Civil War, Priscilla) is the hot-shit star.

HE readers paid little attention to this 7.16.21 piece about Grace Kelly, and then I paywalled it. So I’m giving it another go:

The thing I’ve always loved about the young Grace Kelly isn’t just her ice-queen beauty, but the blend of her Philadelphia blue-blood lineage and refinement with the many stories (however true or untrue) that suggest she was seriously promiscuous.

Am I allowed to say that Kelly was slutty, or at least that I love the stories that suggest she was? I don’t mean this in a derogatory way — I mean it in the most delicious way imaginable. Kelly in the sack = the stuff that dreams are made of.

Kelly’s father, John B. Kelly, was a hound and so, apparently or reputedly, was she. No shame. It has been my experience that very few women are Grace Kelly-like — they might be randy but they lack the looks and breeding, or they have said qualities but are hesitant and ambivalent when it comes to this or that opportunity. Kelly was reputedly focused and fearless.

I’m not suggesting anything new here. We’ve all read the stories. Whatever the actual truth of things, Kelly is believed to have been right up there with the voracious Tallulah Bankhead, Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Astor, Gene Tierney and Lupe Velez, and the mostly older (and mostly married) fellows Kelly allegedly got down with were all famous, wealthy, top-of-the-line…Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Bing Crosby, William Holden, (allegedly) JFK, Oleg Cassini.

There were almost certainly more, or at least I hope so.

If you’re delighted by the idea of Kelly tearing at the belt buckles of almost every older guy she costarred with during her five-year film career (between ’52 and ’56), you don’t want to read Donald Spoto‘s “High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly” (’09), as he pours water on just about every sexual allegation and anecdote anyone’s ever shared about her.

You start to get the idea that the more stories about Kelly’s sexual life that Spoto is able to debunk, the better he feels. He doesn’t seem to like the idea of catting around in the slightest.

Whatever the truth of it, Robert Lacey‘s “Grace” (’94) delivers what I want to hear. During a discussion of Kelly’s affair with the married Ray Milland during the shooting of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder, Skip Hathaway, wife of director Henry Hathaway, who directed Kelly in Fourteen Hours, a 1951 suicide-watch drama, says the following:

“Grace Kelly was a conniving woman. She almost ruined my best friend Mal’s [i.e., Muriel Frances Weber, Milland’s wife of many decades] marriage. Grace Kelly fucked everything in sight. She was worse than any woman I’d ever known.”

Please. Yes. More of this. God.

And yet it appears that Kelly didn’t have it off with her To Catch A Thief costar Cary Grant, or her Rear Window leading man James Stewart. It doesn’t add up but there it is.

Kelly starred or costarred in 11 films between Fourteen Hours (’51) and High Society (’56). Six of them are good — High Noon, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window (her best overall effort), The Country Girl, The Bridges at Toko-Ri and To Catch A Thief.

But you can’t really count Toko-Ri as Kelly’s screen time in that 1954 Korean War film comes to only 12 or 14 minutes, give or take. Her performance as William Holden’s wifey-wifey classes the joint up, but she wasn’t given any scenes that would qualify as meaty or even semi-substantial.

The one in the second row, trying to seem chill and nonchalant.

My young sons (Jett, 11, and Dylan, 9) really didn’t want to attend a screening of Tom Tykwer‘s Run Lola Run, which I was urging them to consider. (It had premiered in Germany in August ’98, and was about to open stateside in mid June of ’99.)

Their argument, being kids, was that they didn’t want to submit to a German-language film set in Berlin, and my answer was “it’s not about the language but the verve, the speed, the cutting, the color, Franka Potente‘s flaming red hair, the running, the animation, the excitement and the suspense.”

After I finally dragged them to a showing they said “okay, wow, fine…we get it.”

A new 4K restoration opens on Friday (6.7), and in plexes yet!

Jett, five minutes ago: “Still the first film that comes to mind when I think of German-language cinema.”

Born on 7.22.74, Potente was 23 or 24 during filming; she turns 50 next month.

I know what the HE woke nutbaggers will say about this, but what about the sensibles (Kristi Coulter, Bobby Peru, Regular Joe)? I feel roughly the same as Megyn Kelly, but that’s to be expected because I’m a hopeless “transphobe”…right, Canyon Coyote?

6.4.24, 7:15 am: I’ve just hit upon a great Biden campaign theme, inspired by Dido’s “Thank You.”

No joke, not being satirical…this could really work.

His campaign chiefs need to buy the rights and persuade Dido to record a Biden version with re-written lyrics, in the exact same way the JFK campaign got Frank Sinatra to record a new version of “High Hopes” in 1960.

Nobody’s going to vote for Joe with super-high enthusiasm or expectations, but everyone knows that the alternative is a sociopathic, foam-at-the-mouth, anti-democratic authoritarian felon.

The Biden trick is to plant a mild but attractive idea, which is that he’s sane and steady and, at the end of the day, he’s “not so bad…he’s not so bah–hah–hah–hahhd.” Play the song, play the song…over and over and over.

Last night…

Some Biden campaign slogans, provided by N.Y Times columnist Bret Stephens in a 6.3.24 “Conversation” column:

“I sometimes forget the names of foreign leaders, but I didn’t forget my oath to the Constitution.”

“Whaddya want, a little bit sleepy or full-blown crazy?”

“This election isn’t just a choice. It’s a choice about having a choice.”

“I might lose, but at least I’ll admit it.”

5.4.24, 5:45 am…

HE variation #1: “I may look like a walking cadaver from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but I’m healthy and vigorous as far as it goes. Inside I feel like I’m 55. Hell, 50!”

HE variation #2: “I may remind you of a drooling assisted living resident being helped to the dining table, but I feel fine…really!”

HE variation #3: “C’mon, you know I’ll never do anything rash or foolish, job-wise. I’m a normie, and I have sharp, woke-minded staffers.”

HE variation #4: “Steady as she goes, even while napping. And definitely more engaged than Reagan was in his late-second-term zombie phase.”

HE variation #5: “I could have withdrawn and allowed younger contenders to compete to succeed me, but my big-time politician ego wouldn’t allow that. I am what I am, but I’m not so bad…I’m not so bah–hah–hah–hahhd.”

HE variation #6: “I might well turn out to be Ruth Bader Biden, but then again I might squeak through. And I need your help to get there!”

HE variation #7: “Whadaya want, some kind of snappy, vigorous, nattily-dressed, JFK-resembling charmer with a Pete Buttigieg mind and a sensibly moderate agenda? Somebody like that instead of me? Okay, I get that on a certain level but it’s not happening, man! I’m it!”

Seriously? The best of them all and certainly the catchiest is the Dido option…”I’m not that bad…I’m not that bah–hah–hah–hahhd.” It has a ring. It’s honest. It touches a chord.

Because Biden isn’t that bad, and if you overlook the border and his administration’s winking at wokesters in general and specifically at hastily-advised trans surgeries for minors, his record has been pretty good. Inflation sucks and CEOs are making 200 or 300 times more than working schmucks, but no Oval Office resident is going to turn that situation around. The world is for the few, but at least doddering Joe Biden believes in and practices democracy.